


"I'd like to get something out of this ACT tutoring, if you don't mind, Louis."

by those_forgotten



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: High School AU, M/M, act tutoring, its all sweet and cute, no smut fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 07:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4129092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/those_forgotten/pseuds/those_forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is a junior, and Louis is somewhat older than him and tutoring him for the ACT (which is a standardized test, if you live in a country in which ur lucky enough not to have to take it). harry is a menace - big surprise!</p>
            </blockquote>





	"I'd like to get something out of this ACT tutoring, if you don't mind, Louis."

It’s when Louis feels a Converse-clad foot rub against his leg for the third time that he decides this whole ACT tutoring thing isn’t going to work out. 

“Harry,” he warned, keeping his eyes carefully trained on the math question at hand. 

“Louis.” He could hear the smile in Harry’s voice. In what depths of hell were smiles audible. 

“Can you tell me why the answer is D instead of B for this one?” 

“D is always the answer, Louis.” 

Louis had no option other than to bang his head on the table at that. “Harry, seriously, your mum will actually behead me if I don’t get you up to at least a 30. I’m supposed to be the trusted wizened one in this situation, the one that got you to the bus on time in the morning and made sure no one took your cookies at lunch and, now, I am to ensure that you get a decent score on this standardized test. Throw me a bone here, Harry.” 

Harry blinked at him slowly, so much like a cow at peace with his plot of grass. After a moment he opened his slow cow mouth. “I have one bone in particular I could throw you.” The dimpled smile he delivered with the statement, so much like his five-year-old self, made Louis wonder if those words had really just come out of his mouth. 

Louis turned his spinny chair until he was facing away from Harry, and resolved to keep it that way for the remainder of their sessions. “Do the rest of this section and I don’t want to hear a single thing from you until you’re finished,” he finally said, staring at the ceiling. 

While he worked – or at least while Louis could testify to Anne as time Harry was instructed to work – Louis pulled out his phone as subtly as possible. Technically speaking, F & B didn’t condone their tutors’ using their phones at all during sessions, but this was an emergency. He pulled up his messages with Liam – the last few concerning Liam’s crisis of how to tell Sophia he wanted to have sex (“jst walk in, undress, wait fr the magic to happen” had been Louis’ advice) – and quickly sent off a new one. 

SOS tutoring horny 17yo w cow eyes nd porn star lips  
innuendos left nd rite   
how do u turn people off u should kno 

I think u and harry wud b sooo sweet 2gthr   
give it a chance tommoooo  
and I wudnt say that 2 somone that just did “it” ;))) ha 

u sound like niall   
u oughtn’t to condone a student/teacher relationship you perv  
PAYNE TRAIN COMIN HOT AND HEAVY INTO THE STATION 

louissss pleeeaase let’s b mature  
g2g soph just came back ;)   
nd b nice hes a good kid 

WOULD A GOOD KID TRY TO SEXUALLY TORMENT ME FOR 2 HOURS EVERY TUESDAY AND THURSDAY   
THOSE COW EYES ARE OUT FOR BLOOD

“Heyyyy,” Louis heard then, and he whipped his head around so fast he slammed it into Harry’s forehead. They both groaned, clutching at their heads. Louis couldn’t decide if he ought to be angry that Harry had been reading his texts over his shoulder or sorry that he’d just brained him. Luckily Harry spoke first. 

“You know, I’m no expert when it comes to the ACT. But I can’t imagine that concussing your student is a strategy you ought to utilize.” And suddenly they were both laughing, hard, and Louis’ head didn’t hurt so much. 

When Louis could catch his breath, he set a look on his face that he hoped appeared stern. “And I can’t imagine your mum would be very happy if she saw how you acted around me while I’m supposed to be tutoring you.” 

Harry looked nearly repentant at that, and he was quiet until, “But Lou, when you advertise ‘personalized, hands-on instruction ensured to get you what you want’, you can’t really blame me for requesting you.” There was still that same cheekiness in his tone, but it was more subdued and his eyes had grown softer. 

“Personalized, hands-on... Christ, Harry, for the ACT! You can’t – wait, you requested me? No one requests me. I’m the nineteen-year-old deadbeat.” It was meant to be a joke but it came out rather sourer than Louis had intended.

“Lou,” Harry said. “Fit as you are, I wouldn’t have requested you unless I thought I would get something out of this.” 

At this point Louis didn’t know if that was a compliment or a thinly veiled insult, so he rolled his eyes to save face. Rolling your eyes, Louis had found, is the best response in most situations and tends to get the most reactions. 

“Yeah, well, fit as you are, I’m not being paid a hundred an hour to have you stroke my ego. Let’s get down to business.” And he pulled up to the desk and started checking Harry’s work. Yet he could feel eyes on him, and so he looked up and was startled by the sad frog face Harry was making at him. 

“Damned hell, what is it, Harry?”  
Harry actually sniffled. “You call me fit and make a Mulan reference, and you expect me to be quiet? You ask too much of me, Louis. Cute boy calls you fit and you can’t even...” Harry muttered after. 

“You’re too much, Curly.” But Louis blushed in spite of himself and finished scoring Harry’s math section – which he found to be a 34. 

“Bleeding garbage,” he whispered. Harry looked up suddenly, now very much resembling a frightened snail, little curls standing up like antennae. 

“Harry, you got a nearly perfect score. Please, please, tell me you didn’t fake needing an ACT tutor just so you could talk to me.” 

Harry looked downright appalled. “Frankly, Louis, I am appalled. I was just waiting for the right moment to talk to you. I need help with the English section, if you don’t mind, sir.” Why Harry was now an affronted Victorian woman who fears her honor has been questioned baffled Louis. 

But he sighed all the same and flipped to the first English section he came across in the packet F & B prepared for its tutors. “All right, fine. This section is about... Glory Foods Home-Style Southern Cooking, apparently very popular in parts of this country, though God knows I’ve never heard of it.” 

“Love that stuff. The turnip greens? To die for, Louis.” And very suddenly Harry was a black woman living in Louisiana. Of course he liked Glory Foods. Of course he did. 

With the blissful quiet Louis found once Harry went to work, Louis considered the new information he had gathered today. Of course he’d had some idea for a while now that Harry liked him. To be honest Louis had known since he was about thirteen when he graduated from 8th grade and received a handwritten note from sixth grader Harry Styles informing Louis that he had been the coolest kid in school and he would miss him now that he was leaving their middle school but that maybe they could meet up again in high school? 

Whether or not Louis kept that note is really irrelevant, because they never really did meet up in high school, except on Harry’s first day of freshman year when Jay made Louis show him around the school as a favor to Anne, since Gemma had done the same for Louis when he’d first started two years ago. It had been all around an all right encounter: Louis had picked Harry up at his house, driven them to Easton High School a whole half hour earlier than he usually woke up, and shown Harry all the shortcuts around the campus before first period. 

Conversation had been easy, though fairly nervous on Harry’s part. Still, it was the first real exchange they had ever shared, at least as far as Louis counted. Arguments over the ethics of Spiderman versus Batman over shortbread biscuits and apple slices at tea when they were in elementary school hardly counted as stimulating conversation. And even those tea playdates had only occurred because Louis often went over to the Styles’ house so Gemma could help him with his homework. The first few times Louis made an appearance at their tea table, Harry had been shocked into silence, hardly able even to eat his peanut butter crackers. Yet as time wore on, Louis was able to wheedle small smiles out of Harry, and later, God’s gift of speech. 

Of course they spoke waiting for the bus, as they lived just across the street from each other and walking together to the bus stop was ordained by both of their mothers. Friendship, though, never seemed to bud between the two of them. Perhaps Louis had always just been a bit too out of reach for little Harry. 

All the same, by the time Harry was a freshman, he was no longer the baby. He had lost his chubby cheeks, his bowl haircut, and his tendency to shrink into himself in public. Just standing at Harry’s locker with him on his first day, Louis noted more than a few girls’ eyes pausing on the lanky curly-haired boy standing beside him. He tried to tamp down the tickling feeling of possessiveness over this boy, this boy he had known since before he could wipe his nose by himself, or tie his shoes, this boy always known to him as Little Curly. 

As they had stood outside Harry’s first biology class, Louis was more than a little surprised at the vague swelling in his chest when he saw who his boy had become. There he stood, books in hand, nervous, bouncing his heels a little– so much like he had been on his first day of preschool when Louis had walked him to Ms. Brown’s room on the complete other side of the building from his first grade class (even making himself late for school because he needed to make sure Curly felt okay with going in before he left). Louis, even then, would have been late to AP European History so long as he was certain that Harry was all right. 

Harry had spoken, though. “Thanks, Lou. It means a lot, you know, ‘specially since I’m just a freshman and – “ Louis had waved him off, accepting it as something he did for Harry, just like everything he did for Harry. 

“But I just want you to know I’ve missed you a lot these two years and hopefully we see each other more this year because I still think you’re the coolest.” These words came out in a rush, and before Louis could even imagine a reply, Harry had disappeared into class. The words, nevertheless, stayed in the hall with Louis for a long while. 

In the time since, the boys had seen each other in the halls, always greeting with a smile; or at Louis’ house when Harry had questions about A Separate Peace (he had always seemed particularly fond of Phineas); and even occasionally at parties, at which Louis was always sure to ruffle Harry’s fringe and loudly pronounce him too young to be there. But Louis had his standardized tests, and Harry had freshman life, and they really didn’t spend as much time together as Harry had clearly hoped. 

By the time the summer before Harry’s junior year rolled around, Louis had assumed that any crush Harry might have ever fostered towards him was long over. Evidently not. 

“Okay, all done,” Louis heard then. Harry slid the test across the table to Louis and pulled a banana out of his backpack. “Power snack time.” 

Louis’ impulse to roll his eyes was beat out by a smile he was horrified to find verged on fond. He was about halfway done scoring the section when the bell announcing the end of the session sounded. He finished correcting hastily before making an even hastier decision. 

He scribbled a fast message at the bottom of the test and shoved it across the desk to Harry. “Right, I’ll see you Thursday to go over your answers. Let me know if you’ve any questions in the meantime,” he said. 

And this time, he made sure he was the one to make the fast getaway before Harry could respond. 

 

“’You’re pretty cool yourself, Curly’? And that actually worked? If I ever said that to Soph, she wouldn’t have looked twice at me.” Louis and Liam were sitting on Louis’ roof sharing a six-pack. It was one of their last days together before Liam left for college in Baltimore. Louis had a few more days than Liam as he was going to a local college and could drive over to move in whenever he wanted. 

“It did, I swear. The next time I tutored him, I swear I thought he was going to drop to his knees on the spot – whether to blow me off or ask me to marry him I’m not quite sure.” 

Liam shook his head. “I always did think he still had a thing for you. And I always did think you did for him, too! You’re too stubborn, Tommo.” 

Louis shrugged. “Not anymore, though. He’s made me into a big softie. Did you know that just the other day – “ He was interrupted by his phone going off with a text. 

Louis looked at his phone a moment before flinging it at Liam with a pained yet somehow tender groan. Thank goodness Liam used to play football, or Louis’ phone would have ended up in his mother’s hydrangeas. Liam stared at the picture of canned corn for a couple of seconds before handing it back cautiously to Louis. If he were off his rocker he should probably handle him with care. 

Louis sighed softly. “’Glory Foods’ home-style corn is nearly as sweet as you.’ And Harry thought he would be the only one getting something out of ACT tutoring.”


End file.
